After

I opened my eyes to see that dim fluorescent lights had replaced the gentle sunlight on Sandy’s porch. I noticed the taste of coffee on my tongue. The only coffee I had had in days came from Sandra.

“Hey there, look who’s awake.” Someone else was holding my hands instead of my new friend. It was a plump older nurse who had a look like she had not expected to be seen. “Sorry to bother you, sweetie. I was just adjusting your bedding. But looks like you’ll be going home soon.” I smiled confusedly at her. She scurried away to call the doctor.

I looked around, and my heart sank in my chest. I was back in the hospital. I had promised myself that I would never come back, and there I was. My memory flashed with the last sights I could recall before the Square: the heat of a blinding spotlight from the floor of the stage, Dotty and Senator Pruce’s faces hiding irritation, someone lifting me.

Searching my memory, I saw Bree’s frightened face above mine. She had carried me off the stage. She had had to carry me again—like she always did. I had let her down. She gave her life for the campaign, and I had killed it with my weakness. My failure. If anyone could save the campaign now, it was Bree. But I knew too much damage had been done. I laughed at myself with wry derision. I had wanted the campaign to end.

Before long, the nurse returned with a doctor who must have been near the end of his long career. His chipped nameplate read “P. Shelley.” While the nurse checked my vitals and helped me dress, Dr. Shelley told me what everyone in town already knew. Generalized anxiety disorder. Insomnia. And what only I had known. The struggle that hadn’t been presentable: extreme exhaustion, severe dehydration, dissociative symptoms, high blood alcohol levels. Dr. Shelley had me sign some forms I didn’t care to read and then continued on to his next patient. Watching him walk away, I noticed that the linoleum floors were just the same as they were five years earlier. So was I.

The old nurse explained prescriptions to me and advised me against alcohol consumption with the patient exasperation of a high school guidance counselor. I nodded and waited for her to finish. Her warning was unnecessary. The taste of coffee had cleared the way for the taste of bile in my throat. After remembering the feeling of vomit pouring through my locked lips with the entire county watching, I wasn’t going to drink again anytime soon.

The nurse walked me out to the lobby to retrieve my personal effects. I could hear a caller shouting at the receptionist through the landline. He gave me a friendly smile and handed over a large plastic bag with my watch, phone, and wallet. Taking out my things, I saw the visitor log through the bag’s clear plastic. A hospital this size normally didn’t have many visitors, but the same name was written for every day that week: Bree.My stomach twisted into a knot of guilt.

I turned on my phone out of habit. No one had called. Not even my parents. Relieved, I turned my phone back off. I wasn’t talking to anyone. The nurse helped me close the clasp of my watch. I didn’t need her to, but I appreciated her trying to help. “Thank you, Ms… I’m sorry I didn’t get your name.”

“Silvia,” she said. I gave her a familiar smile. “Thank you, Silvia. For everything.”

When I was almost out the waiting room door, Silvia called to me. “Hey sweetie…” She beckoned me back and lowered her voice to a whisper. Standing closer to her, I could smell cigarette smoke on her scrubs. “If you don’t mind me asking, what was that song you kept singing?”

“Um…I don’t remember. Was I singing? Sorry about that.”

“No, no. It’s okay. I was just curious. You kept singing to yourself while you were out. I thought I almost recognized the song. It was something like, ‘If you’re not feeling happy today, just put on a smiling face…’” Silvia didn’t have any idea what that song meant.

I intended to keep it that way. “I have no clue. Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s okay, hun. Now you go home and get some rest.” She gave me a kind squeeze on the arm.

I left the hospital with the sinking feeling that I would be back soon. I had thought I had handled my mental health—closed the file and checked the box for that part of my life. Apparently, it was a problem I would never solve. Walking to my car, I fought to keep the refrain of Sandy’s song from circling my mind.

I forgot it for a moment when I opened my car door and the heat almost knocked me out again. I should have remembered what a warm Mason County fall did to a locked car. When the song started up again, I turned on the radio. The station had been on public radio for years, but I turned it to the classic country station my mother played when I was a boy. One of her favorite songs was playing.

“Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side…”

* * *

Once I got to my apartment, I lost all sense of time. It didn’t matter anymore. I had left my laptop in my car and didn’t want to see all the emails from concerned clients asking about finding new representation. The campaign was over. My parents hadn’t called even after what they surely saw on the TV. And I certainly couldn’t talk to Bree—or even face her. Her disappointment would be unbearable. I badly wanted to drink. I was thankful that I couldn’t bring myself to go to the liquor store.

I couldn’t see the sun rise or fall through my curtains, but it felt like days passed. I just sat. Sometimes my mind showed me images of the local press reporting on my collapse and the campaign’s implosion. Sometimes I saw pictures of my parents going about their social lives as their associates conspicuously avoided my name in conversation. Most often, I saw Bree desperately holding the campaign together with prayers and press releases. I wished her the best. I couldn’t do it any more.

I heard a knock at the door. I ignored it. It was probably a canvasser for Pruce. They would go away eventually.

The knock came again. I couldn’t move. I was sure whoever was out there had already judged me. I couldn’t do anything to impress them.

“Mikey,” the person at the door shouted. “I know you’re in there. You know I have a key…” It was Bree. She was angry. I thought about trying to hide before realizing how childish that would have been. I heard her key in the lock.

“Have you just been sitting here in the dark?” she scolded as she let herself in. “I’ve been trying to call you for the last thirty minutes. I went to the hospital, and they told me you had checked yourself out. What do you think—” She saw me sitting silently. She sat down her purse and sat beside me.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered.

“Hey, don’t worry about it.” She put her arm around my shoulders in an awkward attempt at warmth. “I was just scared when I couldn’t find you.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m just glad you’re alright.”

We sat in silence for a long moment. Neither of us had ever been taught how to handle this. We had been taught how to fight fear, how to power through pain. Never how to feel it.

“Mikey…” Bree said quietly. She was using all of her effort to form her emotions into words. “Um…”

With nothing left to prove, I hugged my sister. She hugged me back. In that instant, we didn’t need words.

“I’m sorry…” Bree continued as she instinctively held back her tears.

“It’s okay—”

“No, it’s not okay. Thank you, but no. I’m sorry for overworking you. I’m sorry for ignoring you when you tried to talk to me. I heard your words, but I didn’t listen for your feelings. I was scared to. I just tried to fix it. I thought that—all of this was what we were supposed to do.”

“I know. I did too.” We were sharing the same secret. “So, what happens to the campaign now? I’m sure you’ve been working overtime since I imploded.”

Bree caught the self-deprecation in my words. “Hey,” she said with protective anger. “Don’t say that. You didn’t implode. You let go. And I’m proud of you. The campaign doesn’t matter right now. You can decide what to do about it later.”

It felt like a weight was lifted from my lungs. I breathed freely for the first time I could remember.

“Michael, are you okay?” My name. The one my parents had given me when I was born. It had been years since I had heard it. Years since they decided “Mikey” would be more likable.

It was the question again. But it sounded different this time. Bree wasn’t asking it like she was expecting me to say my next line. She was asking to understand—to listen.

“I…” I wanted to meet my sister in her honesty. It took all of the little strength I had left to say the words I had to say. “I don’t know.”

In this unfamiliar vulnerability, I was afraid of what Bree would say. Saying I didn’t know was saying nothing. It didn’t give her anything to fix. It was only a confession.

“That’s okay.” Her voice told me I did not need forgiveness. “When you figure it out, I’ll be here for you.”

Looking at her in the darkness, I saw someone I had never seen before. It was still Bree, but it was like we were meeting each other for the first time. Not a fragile fallen angel and a wonder woman of steel. Just two people who saw each other’s broken hearts and loved each other anyway. Just a brother and a sister.

We sat in silence for another long moment before Bree stood up and walked to the curtains. “Mind if I open these? We need some light.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

When she opened the curtains, the amber sunlight of late afternoon peeked through the window. Behind her head, I saw a butterfly fly through the light. The soft warmth that fell on my skin felt like Sandra’s smile.